EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Princess Diana's aunt Mary Roche leaves two of her girls from her £426,000 will

She lived a remarkable life, married three times, flew over the Himalayas and spoke her thoughts with a candor that far exceeded the more orthodox of her fellow aristocrats. Now, ten months after her death at the age of 88, Princess Diana's aunt Mary Roche has left a hint of mystery in her will, which has just been published.

Mary and her younger sister Frances, Diana's mother, came from a family that had been greatly enriched two generations earlier when her grandfather, James, 3rd Lord Fermoy, married an American heiress.

But Maria did not leave behind a huge fortune. On the contrary, after taxes and other costs were paid, her total estate amounted to £425,983 – a decidedly modest sum for a woman who once owned an airline that ferried passengers on safari across Kenya and who from her three marriages bought a house in Wilton Crescent, Belgravia, always one of London's most expensive addresses, with homes now effortlessly selling for over £20 million.

But what is even more intriguing is that Mary, whose father, Maurice, 4th Lord Fermoy, shot at Sandringham with George VI the day before the king's death, decided to leave nothing to two of her four children.

Instead, she stipulated that her estate would be divided equally by the eldest of her three daughters, Alexandra, and her only son, Edward.

The two youngest daughters, Antonia – known as Anya – and Jo, were left out. Until recently both lived modestly in Frome, Somerset. Jo remains there, in an 1980s housing estate that she bought for £170,000 in 2016; Anya was located on a neighboring estate but appears to have been sold for £220,000 in 2020.

Like Edward and Alexandra, Anya accompanied their mother, who was then married to her third husband, to Diana's wedding.

Mary was already convinced the marriage was not going to work after seeing her niece, with whom she had developed a close bond during Diana's childhood, looking 'unhappy' at a reception at Buckingham Palace.

“They were at very different stages of development,” Mary later reflected. Mary described her niece as 'very natural and prone to giggling, great fun', adding: 'Diana was young and had limited life experience, and Prince Charles was already a great thinker.'

Her son, Edward, tells me that his mother's judgment of her will was similarly certain.

“My mother gave different things to my sisters at different times and, in fairness, that's how it turned out,” he explains.

Home Affairs Minister Chris Philp has grown a beard. Did he do that to keep up with his boss, James Cleverly, or perhaps to make himself look older? When he was clean-shaven, 47-year-old Philp had a slightly disheveled, jejune appearance. He now looks like England football manager Gareth Southgate.

BBC man: Staff were told how to avoid tax

Michael Cole, the BBC reporter who became Mohamed Al Fayed's PR mouthpiece, remembers the good old days at the broadcaster.

“I was on staff for 20 years,” he writes in a new book, How Do We Pay For The BBC After 2027?

'During that time there was a whole department helping secretaries find affordable housing and another tasked with advising foreign correspondents and others working abroad for the BBC on how to hide their salaries from the tax authorities by to open bank accounts in Jersey and how to claim the tax. maximum amounts of allowances.'

Perhaps still a better use of license fee payers' money than filling Gary Lineker's mouth with gold?

NO Adult bikini shots in Davina McCall or Lorraine Kelly style for TV presenter Anthea Turner, who believes more is more when it comes to clothes.

The former Blue Peter presenter, 63, says: 'As I get older I've come to realize that I look better with my clothes on than without them, so the more clothes I have to wear the better – especially those black opaque ones tights that make my legs look like they did before something happened to my knees.”

Trinny was made up while a cosmetics company is making handsome profits

Trinny Woodall may seem bothered by the blues, but she's actually quite happy with herself.

The 59-year-old What Not To Wear presenter and beauty entrepreneur, who is pictured braving the winter chill in a bright blue fluffy coat and crushed velvet trousers, is celebrating some impressive figures at her make-up brand Trinny London.

Newly published figures show that the company earned more than £153,000 a day last year from selling £56 million worth of cosmetics.

The news must have made the company's many investors – including her ex-boyfriend Charles Saatchi and Unilever – happy. Trinny London made a profit of £1.9 million, making up for a £2.1 million loss the year before.

He is a top chef in the United Arab Emirates, where he cooked for royals and famous visitors in his restaurant Gaia Dubai. Now Izu Ani, who grew up in Tottenham, North London, has returned to the capital to run Gaia Mayfair, opposite The Ritz.

It already attracts stars such as actor Luke Evans and model Sabrina Elba.

However, Ani is alarmed by the rising crime in Sadiq Khan's London.

“I always leave my phone everywhere in Dubai and it always finds me,” he says.

'But here you never know.

“My colleagues said to me, 'Chief, can you just give us your stuff and we can keep it in a locker?'

Flower power for Prince on a trip to Sri Lanka

Princess Anne was praised last week for her typically no-nonsense visit to Sri Lanka, where she carried her own bags off a commercial flight. But she isn't the only member of the royal family visiting the South Asian island this year.

Queen Elizabeth's cousin, Prince Michael of Kent, 81, and his wife, Marie-Christine, who turned 79 on Monday, were welcomed to the capital Colombo, where they were decorated with flowers at Sri Lanka's Tourism Promotion Bureau.

It is not clear whether they were on vacation or on a business trip. In 2008, Princess Michael, who reportedly charged £25,000 for public appearances, opened a villa in Sri Lanka.